During freshman year of college, I lived off of Kraft mac 'n cheese and Cocoa Puffs. Not because I couldn't cook-but because Mother never let us have awful artificially flavored junk food in our household since it would "OH MY GOD, ROT OUR TEETH." Never mind that our home had chipped lead paint, asbestos in the attic and that I'd wrestle with Brother on the lawn 10 seconds after Dad sprayed DDT.
I gorged on Kraft mac 'n cheese until I noticed my skin turning the shade of cheese-powder-orange-yellow. Whoah! That color whipped my heart back 28 years to North Platte, Neb., second grade, where I was the only Asian kid in the entire school. This was before "cultural sensitivity" became all the rage.
We didn't have a lot of money back then; while the other kids scored the 64 pack of Crayola with built-in sharpener, I got only 24. Well, 12 really, but I broke each one in half. I remember having trouble coloring the skin of my family, as Peach just wasn't right, and Indian Red made me look like I'd swallowed a bottle of Taco Bell hot sauce. The darker kids in school already had dibs on Raw Sienna, so I had to adapt the technique of lightly rubbing a fat Yellow on its side, which made me look rather jaundiced. As a joke, one of the snickering Peach kids tossed his Ultra Orange at me, but I refused to let him see my embarrassment and pretended to be delighted at his generosity. So for the rest of the school year, everyone in my family was colored in Ultra Orange, which brings us back to why I ditched mac 'n cheese.
If you think about it, mac 'n cheese really isn't that convenient. It takes nine minutes to boil water (11 if you watch), 14 to cook the mac and two to reconstitute the "cheese". Twenty-five minutes for 580 grams of sodium and 49 grams of carbs? I can give you a better fast food. My 15-Minute Asian Noodles are actually healthy and come with real vegetables.
Take a trip to your local Asian market to stock up. Oceanic on Tampa Street, just north of I-275, is my favorite. Oyster sauce, Maggi sauce and Chinese rice wine are all inexpensive pantry items. The yellow noodles are pre-boiled then "fresh-frozen" before being packaged, so they only take a two-minute bath in boiling water to cook. Look for them in the freezer section.
Be creative with your vegetables. Red bell peppers, carrots, cabbage, scallions, onions, celery, mushrooms, bean sprouts or snow peas are all wonderful in this dish. The only rule is to cut the vegetables as thin as possible to make for a fast stir-fry.
15-Minute Stir Fried Noodles
Serves two as main dish
1 lb "fresh-frozen" noodles
1/2 cup sliced fresh mushrooms (I use enoki)
2 stalks scallions, cut into 1-inch lengths
1 carrot, thinly sliced or shredded
2 tbs oyster sauce
2 tsp Maggi sauce (substitute with soy sauce)
1 tbs Chinese rice wine (substitute with dry sherry)
2 tbs cooking oil (canola or vegetable)
1. Boil 6 cups of water and cook noodles according to package directions (timing depends on thickness of noodles). Use your chopsticks to jiggle and separate the noodle strands in the water. Reserve 1/4 cup of hot noodle water. Drain noodles, set aside. While water is boiling, thinly slice your vegetables. Multitask!
2. Heat wok or large fry pan over high heat. When hot, add cooking oil. Add scallions, fry for 10 seconds. Add carrots, fry until softened, 30 seconds. Add mushrooms, fry 30 seconds.
3. Add oyster, Maggi, rice wine and the reserved hot water. Cook for 30 seconds. Add your noodles, fry another minute to incorporate all ingredients.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.